Böcker av Beatriz Manz

Political violence and military repression have displaced some two million people in Central America in the 1980s. While conflict elsewhere in Central America has received considerable attention, the war against an unarmed civilian population in Guatemala has largely been hidden from the outside world. The military have waged a particularly brutal and extensive counter-insurgency campaign, leaving thousands dead and prompting several hundred thousand to flee to neighboring countries.In Refugees of a Hidden War, the author examines in detail three predominantly Indian regions in northern Guatemala, reconstructing the devastation and its aftermath from the perspective of those who lived through it and its impact on the culture of the Maya Indian peasants. Individual community experiences are placed in the context of the country's pattern of land ownership and unequal exercise of political and economic power, typical of Central America. Manz also assesses the critical situation of Guatemalan refugees in southern Mexico and the prospects for their repatriation.Refugees of a Hidden War presents the first extensive fieldwork in Guatemala since the mass violence of the early 1980s. This micro look at Guatemalan community life provides important insights on the roots of conflict in Central America.

Paradise in Ashes is a deeply engaged and moving account of the violence and repression that defined the murderous Guatemalan civil war of the 1980s. In this compelling book, Beatriz Manz-an anthropologist who spent over two decades studying the Mayan highlands and remote rain forests of Guatemala-tells the story of the village of Santa Maria Tzeja, near the border with Mexico. Manz writes eloquently about Guatemala's tortured history and shows how the story of this village-its birth, destruction, and rebirth-embodies the forces and conflicts that define the country today. Drawing on interviews with peasants, community leaders, guerrillas, and paramilitary forces, Manz creates a richly detailed political portrait of Santa Maria Tzeja, where highland Maya peasants seeking land settled in the 1970s. Manz describes these villagers' plight as their isolated, lush, but deceptive paradise became one of the centers of the war convulsing the entire country. After their village was viciously sacked in 1982, desperate survivors fled into the surrounding rain forest and eventually to Mexico, and some even further, to the United States, while others stayed behind and fell into the military's hands. With great insight and compassion, Manz follows their flight and eventual return to Santa Maria Tzeja, where they sought to rebuild their village and their lives.